Chapter 4
Glass Half-Empty

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or its characters, only my own OC's, Energy Magic, and Ideas

.:+:.

"Hmm?"

The young woman with fiery red hair pulled up, her green eyes casting back toward the figure of Chase as she noticed he fell behind, his blue eyes casting up toward the sky overhead, looking over the forest and the line of trees sloping down away below them. Four long days of movement, dodging from town to won in their march back to the Guild- and now they were so close, but he stopped.

Chase drew to a halt, looking back the way they had come and the figure of Magnolia below them, over the pale blue expanse of the sky stretching over the lands surrounding the town- hair ruffled back by a sudden strong gust of cool wind sweeping over everything, the tie he pulled it into shaking softly in the breeze.

He blinked, his hands settled in his pockets and silent, attention focused on the distant horizon- senses on high at the sudden flux of energy that tingled at the base of his mind. Something foreign, something he hadn't quite felt before, it was like a wash of fresh air from a hot summer day... Almost like coming up for air after being held under the water for a long time. Refreshing, pleasant... Calm.

He blinked again, blue eyes glittering as he took in a breath. His skin pulled slightly under the small, faint scar running across the bridge of his nose, left there on his skin by a wicked blade and grasped by a hand long and thin.... A smile pulling at twisted lips as the glow of cold, glinting eyes.

He swallowed as the unwanted memory flashed in his mind, pushing it away as he focused on what strange Energy suddenly danced upon the air, moving and twisting with the wind as if it were carried by a leaf caught in it's clutches. It was pleasant, it was warm and cool at once... And light. It left a strange, pleasurable feeling in his core... Remnants of something he hadn't felt as often as he should.

Seven long years.... And this is the first time, he had actually felt some small burst of.... Hope..?

He blinked again, head tilting slightly. He didn't quite understand this feeling at all, it wasn't like anything he'd felt before. It wasn't something bad, inherently this sudden flux of Energy, of emotion that seemed to spark off the wind itself.... It felt blissful. He found himself taking a deep breath in, as if he wanted to drink it.

"Chase," the girl with the red hair murmured, eyebrow quirked. When he didn't reply she sighed, looking slightly bemused. "Energy Mages... Always looking off into the distance like they're on a different planet or something..." She shook her head, glancing sideways toward another young woman, her silver hair glinting in the sunlight as she glanced toward Chase, her purple gaze fixed and steady.

"You didn't feel that?" The silver haired woman murmured, the other blinked.

"What?" She mumbled, sweatdropping slightly as she glanced away, arms crossed over her chest. The one with the purple eyes blinked, giving the other a pointed look- which was promptly scowled upon.

".... Tch.... You mean that sudden burst of warmth on the wind?" The red-head mumbled, she sighed, looking away at the sun overhead. "Yeah.... It kinda feels like the sun started shining more brightly than it has in a long time."

"... Something happened." The girl with the purple eyes murmured, "Something changed..... That's probably what he's picked up on." She gestured toward the motionless figure of Chase, his back to the both of them. The red-head blinked, sweatdropping slightly.

"You're too much like him and Frea, you know that?" She sighed, the silver-haired woman chuckled, smiling lightly.

"Well, they are the the strongest Mages in the Guild." She smirked at the red-head, flicking her lightly on the arm in a jesting manner. "We could probably stand to take a lesson or two from them."

"Lesson in what? Cloud-watching and long spouts of silent, motionless contemplation?" The redhead shot back easily, her lips pulling into a smirk. "Or maybe how to properly block everyone else out and nap with our eyes open- and call it 'concentration'." She smiled, her hands raising as she gestured in the air before her animatedly, the purple-eyed woman shook her head slightly, though she looked amused.

"You forgot the most important lesson of all." She quipped back lightly, "How to guess everyone's thoughts to the point it's creepy, because everyone knows neither Chase nor Frea are Telepathic." The redhead laughed lightly, nodding.

"Oh yeah, they have creepy down to an art."

"You know I can hear you both, right?"

They turned at Chase's lighthearted chuckle, seeing he had turned back their direction, his arms about his chest and smiling- even despite the obvious teasing. They both blinked, the silver-haired girl smiling slightly as the red-head smirked.

"Oh really? I'm sorry, your head was so in the clouds we thought you surely couldn't." The red-head laughed. Chase chuckled, shaking his head.

"Alright, fine- I was distracted I'll give you that." He replied, starting forward again toward them. They waited enough to let him pass them by, as he continued walking into the trees, continuing down the path they had set upon. The two woman glanced at each other as he passed, blinking- before beginning to walk after him again.

"Well?" The red-head pressed.

"What was it? What'd you feel?" The silver haired woman added in.

"No clue." Chase replied with a small shrug.

"How can you not know?"

"I don't know everything, Solana, not even what's going through your head all the time- though it isn't hard to guess." Chase replied lowly, smirking back at her as she shrugged, smiling herself. "I'm an Energy Mage and that makes me an expert on most things Energy related, but that doesn't mean I know all the answers." The red-head huffed slightly, looking away from him at what was less than an answer, though she wasn't angry with it.

"You don't think something's gone wrong on Frea's end, do you?" The silver haired woman murmured, purple eyes glinting.

"Don't worry so much about Teach, Aisha- though I know you do." Chase chuckled, "Teach can handle herself, besides.... I don't think this feeling, this Energy- I don't think it's bad. It isn't negative, or malignant." Aisha blinked, sweatdropping slightly as she let out a small breath.

"... I suppose it'd be best to trust you." She mumbled, smiling at him slightly. "Creepy or not, you do have a good sense about things." He laughed under his breath, shaking his head at her.

"I'm not creepy...." He mumbled, too low for either of them to hear- he didn't take their teasing to heart of course, he knew they only meant it in good fun. 

"... Well, I guess Frea is the Guild's top Mage." Solana sighed, "Count on anyone to come back no matter what, it'd be her." She hooked her hands behind her head, her red hair pulled into two high pigtails and green gaze casting upward at the sky. Beside her Aisha's hair shifted in the wind slightly, braided back with a blue ribbon intertwined with the strands of silver that shone in the sunlight.

"... Wonder what Job she left on?"

.:+:.

There was shouting and the echo of explosions bouncing from the stone and through the ravines, sound of struggle and destruction that carried well past its source.... strangled screams and shouts of fury that lasted for hours, until near silence fell again heavy and foreboding- broken only by one, clear, terrified voice.

"... H-how...?!"

Smoke plumed from the building and through it's shattered roof, carried away by a wind blowing through the surrounding canyon land. The building lay in shambles, walls crumbled and roof collapsed, debris thrown about and doors ripped from their hinges. Bodies lay about, knocked unconscious and bruised all about, bones cracked and clothes frayed. All of them knocked senseless, some of them moaning in pain, several buried under piles of rubble.

A man trembled, his clothes ripped and blood dripping down over his eyes from a gash on his temple. His dark eyes glittered in fear and disbelief, locked to the figure of a woman standing before him, her cloak draped about her figure and looking slightly dirty, with small tears running through the fabric- but her state was nothing compared with those of the unconscious people surrounding them. She stood tall and silent, her silver gaze piercing as she gazed at him coldly from under the shadow of her hood, her hands working to tie the cloak about her neck again after pulling it over her shoulders.

"... H-how..... How is this... Possible......?!" The man stammered, eyes wide and trembling from head to foot as he groveled on the floor, unable to stand back up. "... No human... Is this strong.....!"

"Its over," Frea hissed lowly, her voice like ice. "The Triad is destroyed." Bits of rock and other wood shifted as she passed them by, regardless of having physically touched the rubble or not.

".... You..... You're the one.... Who.....?!" The man stuttered, eyes widening as a surge of realization sparked off of him. "..... You're that woman... Who defeated.... That... That darkness...?!"

Frea blinked, eyes narrowed slightly at the comment, before she looked away, for a split second she looked.... Haunted.

"It doesn't matter." She growled, looking back toward him as she started walking forward toward him, her hand raising as silver flowed about her fingers. "You won't need to know that, not where you're going." Her hand raised up to his forehead as he tried to stumble backward away from her, looking like a cornered animal about to be eaten by some strange, unbelievable beast.

She flicked him on the forehead, a powerful burst of her Magic pluming up and knocking him back with a shattering slam into the floor, his eyes whited out and all sense gone in an instant as the air shook with the sudden Magical Pressure.

Things fell into utter silence apart from the moaning, and the crackle of the flames still flicking at the air, accompanied by the intermittent shift of rubble.

Frea stood in utter stillness, at her feet the man was unmoving, not making a noise outside his raspy breaths. For a minute her silver gaze glittered coldly, nearly devoid of emotion, empty almost... She blinked, and what strange look appeared in her eyes was washed away.

She turned away from him, away from the destruction and what fury and pain sparked on the air like lightning.... And quickly that was becoming a mess of jumbled Energy she couldn't pick apart.

Her cloak flowed behind her as she started toward the blown off doors at the front of the Building, her hand moving up lightly to trace a cross shape in the air with her Magic. There followed a small, light ring, as she tapped the middle of the drawing with a finger,

"Tell your Knights to assemble and move toward the Tregyr Canyons with as many cars as you have. There are a good three hundred Dark Wizards from the Death Bolt Guild that need to be rounded up." Frea said to the air on a clear, commanding tone. "And tell the Council that the Triad is destroyed, my Job's done."

"R-right away ma'am..."

Frea swiped her hand to the side, the mark made of her Magic giving way to nothing as she stood in the entrance, silver eyes set on the distant lands away from the canyon land, the pale glitter of green far, far away.

Slowly, with the mayhem and the mess... It felt like some part of her soul had filled. With every hit, every man downed and ever member left to lay... That emptiness that had eaten away at her started to fill, ever so slowly.

It stopped painfully short of the mark, it never reached the top.... And somehow she felt more empty than before.

I thought.... It'd feel different.

.:+:.

".... This is.... Insane...."

DoranBolt hissed the words under his breath, eyes casting about the hundreds of Wizards the Knights were working to round up, and about the sheer destruction the area had sustained. All of this, the damage, and the defeat of one of the three most feared Dark Guilds in Fiore- all of it the work of one, single person.

A single person, of whom, he had never been able to approach. Not after what had happened on Tenrou, not after what he had done to deceive her Guild... And how it all ended.

... A truly dangerous, and insanely powerful Mage. Someone you'd want to think twice about confronting. A feeling that hit home all the harder when looking upon what mayhem had transpired, it cut more deeply when he thought back on when she had been given the assignment in the first place.... It had only been a few days. She had done in days what the Council couldn't do in years, and he felt himself shudder.

... Fairy Tail..... What's left of it anyway, I'd say they're lucky to have her still with them.... He sweatdropped heavily,

He'd hate to think what would have become of Fairy Tail of she hadn't been around....

That woman.... She's a force of nature.

.:+:.

I lied, have another Chapter.

Slain Among Ice and Fire should be up next! <3